Lenovo chose to use more traditional hardware for the keyboard on the new Yoga Book, E Ink instead of their previous Halo design. This update means that screen will accept touch and pen input without needing extra steps, making it much easier to draw directly on the screen after a second or two for it to refresh to the new interface. The lack of physical keys may be a drawback for some, Ars Technica had some issues when trying to compose lengthy texts though those used to touchscreens may never notice. Sadly Lenovo has not included the ability to read anything but PDFs on the E Ink screen, hopefully that will change soon.

"Lenovo's quirky Yoga Book is back with some significant updates for 2018. The original Yoga Book was a unique hybrid of a tablet sporting a "halo" keyboard panel with no actual keys and a real paper drawing pad. Part netbook and part convertible, this year's edition remains quirky but seems more practical and less cumbersome than the original."

Lenovo's new ThinkPad X1 offers a unique choice, you can get a silver model if for some reason you wish to commit such a heretical action. The connectivity options include two Thunderbolt 3 and two USB-C 3 ports, along with a mini-LAN port if you can't go wireless at some point, which should be quite infrequently as you can install a SIM card in these Yogas. The IPS screen is HDR, though not OLED and The Register was quite taken with it. Check out their full review as well as the rather important note at the very end right here.

"The Yoga form factor has been one of Lenovo’s biggest successes, and in 2013 the company slapped a business suit on it and brought the it into the Thinkpad fold. Three years later it added the X1 branding, and a premium OLED display."

Many, many moons ago a vulnerability was discovered which would let you grab some or all of the data last written to RAM. A computer in sleep mode could be powered off, the firmware specifically modified and then booted from a USB drive, allowing an attacker to extract data from the RAM. This requires physical access and a specific skill set but does not take all that long. This new attack is used to grab the encryption keys from memory, which then allows them to gain access to the data stored on your encrypted drives. The Inquirer reports that there is a solution to this resurrected vulnerability, however it is only easy to implement before a system is provided to customers, worrying for companies using these commonly deployed brands.

"But F-Secure principal security consultant Olle Segerdahl, along with other researchers from the security outfit, claim they've discovered a way to disable that safety measure and extract data using the ten-year-old cold boot attack method."

The Story Begins

In the automotive world, there is the idea of a sleeper car. Sleepers are high-performance cars in mundane, dull shells. This performance can come from a variety of different areas; it might be a high-performance trim level of a vehicle that most people associate to be cheap or slow, from modifications, or even entire drivetrain swaps.

The enthusiast PC building world also has their equivalent sleepers. In general, these sorts of project swap new, high-performance hardware into chassis from vintage desktop computers, this build from Linus Tech Tips springs to mind as a standout option.

One area that largely gets left behind in the PC hardware modification world is notebooks. Generally, notebooks don’t use standard components, making it virtually impossible to do something like swap newer hardware into an existing notebook chassis.

What we are taking a look at today, however, defies all common knowledge of the PC world. Through the work of some intrepid modders, I am now the proud owner of a 2010-vintage Lenovo ThinkPad X201 with a modern, 8th generation quad-core mobile processor, NVMe SSD, and 32GB of DDR4 memory in it.

Intel's delayed release of a new processor is going to have a noticeable effect on the laptop market this year. As there is little chance of seeing anything new until towards the end of this year, laptop designers will not be able to offer new models for the holidays and will instead have to rework existing products. DigiTimes suggests we will see trimmed down models with lower price tags to try to entice consumers into purchasing something, as they expect lower demand than we saw last year. Hopefully some gaming machines may become more affordable, or we will start to see models incorporating AMD's new chips become more common.

"Global notebook vendors including HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asustek Computer will be unable to launch new models fitted with Intel's new-generation CPUs in the second half of 2018 as scheduled, as the release of Intel's new offerings will not come soon enough for this year's high season, according to industry sources."

The gaming laptop market is going through some big changes, with the two market leaders seeing their dominance challenged by companies more frequently associated with business models. While ASUS and MSI still account for half of the entire market, both with over a million units sold in the first half of 2018, Dell has already hit 500K and DigiTimes predicts Lenovo to hit 800-900K units by the end of the year.

It will be interesting to see how the market changes now that you can once again buy a GPU for less than the price of one of these gaming laptops; not to mention what this competition will do to pricing and design.

"But their market leaderships are being undermined by Dell, Lenovo, HP and even Acer, all of which are strengthening their shipment momentum via pricing competition in the first half of 2018, with both ASP and gross margins for gaming notebooks driven down as a result."

The first Yoga book with the Halo keyboard, a touchscreen which shows a keyboard as well as accepting input from a stylus, did not get high marks from Ken when he reviewed it last year. The concept itself was not the problem, it was the lack of any travel on the trackpad and keyboard, even enabling the tactile feedback was not enough to help with typing or clicking and dragging icons. For short tasks it was acceptable, once you grow accustomed to the interface, but you wouldn't want to compose a lengthy document. The next generation will have an faster processor as well as AI to assist with typing, one expects predictive text a la most mobile phones and improved stylus input.

"Teased during Intel's keynote at Computex, where the chipmaker unveiled a 'limited edition 5GHz Core i7', Lenovo's Yoga Book 2 retains the firm's unusual 'Halo keyboard'. Basically, it's a second screen, with a touchscreen surface acting as a digital keyboard."

Lenovo has been updating their Yoga lineup for more than a few years now, with the 920 model being one of the more popular models in recent years. This refresh keeps the same body and watchband hinge, instead the updates are all hidden inside. The base model features a Kaby Lake R Core i7-8550U, 8 GB of DDR4-2400, a 256GB NVMe SSD and a 1080p display, these can be upgraded to 8 GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe drive and a 4k display if you so choose. Regardless of the display you choose, the touchscreen has been developed by Wacom and offers 4096 levels of sensitivity which makes grabbing a stylus a very good idea, though including one would have been even better.

"Lenovo’s Yoga series has long been respected for its notebooks’ ability to bend to your will, and the 920 (14) proves to be one of the best models the series has seen. With its incredibly sturdy design, sharp watchband hinge, super-thin frame, and beautiful aesthetics, the Yoga 920 is the ultralight 2-in-1 to consider."

The tides are turning. Over the last few years, the technology industry sung with praises and predictions on virtual reality. The past year, however, tides have begun to shift. While VR remains prohibitively expensive and still wanting in the kind of experiences gamers crave, Augmented Reality is becoming the head-mounted hope for mainstream saturation.

Today, we’re taking a look at one of the first major consumer AR products with Lenovo Star Wars: Jedi Challenges. The set marries exciting technology with exciting IP, but is it enough to justify the $199 MSRP?

The set comes in a large box that doubles as a storage container when the headset and isn’t in use. Everything is nicely packaged, but especially the lightsaber which rests in a nice foam cut-out just under the top half of the box. The unboxing experience is befittingly premium for a product such as this.

The attention to detail on the lightsaber is impressive. It’s a loving recreation of Luke’s lightsaber from A New Hope. The top illuminates white or blue to indicate when it’s paired with your phone. In-game, pressing the side buttons causes the blade to rise up with the iconic sound effect; if you’re a Star Wars fan, it’s beyond neat.